L.A. database of deaths aids families who seek closure

It had been years since the Boatwrights had heard from their beloved brother James Arthur - the only one of the 10 surviving adult siblings estranged from the family.

Wanting to bridge the gap of years and miles, they launched an Internet search in August from their homes in the Deep South, knowing only that he lived somewhere in Los Angeles.

They got a hit, but the news brought them sorrow rather than joy. James Arthur Boatwright, age 65, was among the 4,827 unclaimed bodies listed in an online database by the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office.

After contacting authorities, Boatwright's family learned that he'd died in August 2007 at Pacifica Hospital of the Valley in Sun Valley, two months after being hit by a car.

"We were able to get his ashes and came to closure with his death," said Evelyn Boatwright May, 72, who lives in Georgia. "It was really something to find out two years later that your brother has been dead."

Boatwright's name was added to the unclaimed body database after coroner's officials had exhausted other means for notifying his next of kin, such as fingerprints, public records and inquiries to other Internet sites. Authorities sometimes can locate relatives in other countries using documentation showing that the deceased wired money out of the United States.

And while these resources can help authorities identify the body, they may offer few clues about the next of kin.

"You see families becoming more and more estranged," said coroner's investigator Joyce M. Kato. "They are losing that link."

If records are located that show the deceased served in the military, the body is interred at Riverside National Cemetery. Other unclaimed bodies, however, are kept in the county morgue for 30 days, then cremated by companies under contract to the county.

The ashes are stored for several years in the hope that relatives like the Boatwrights will eventually come forward. The ashes are released to families, who pay a $352 fee.

Officials said 708 unclaimed bodies were cremated in 2008, a 48 percent increase from the 480 cremated just three years earlier.

Each year, the ashes in years-old cases are buried during a service at Evergreen Cemetery in East Los Angeles. This year's funeral will be held Dec.9 for those who died in 2005 and 2006.

And while their physical remains will be disposed of, the names of those unclaimed souls remain on the list.

About 70 percent of the names in the database are men ages 50 to 70 who authorities believe were homeless or estranged from their families, Kato said.

"You get a lot of cases where they don't care," Kato said.

Still, many others who locate their fathers, brothers, sisters and mothers on the Web site are shocked and riddled with grief to learn that a loved one had died without their knowledge.

Tina Vincent of Flemington, W.Va., was asked by her father-in-law to search online for his younger brother, who had lost touch with the family after moving to California.

As with the Boatwrights, the Vincent family learned via the Internet that their loved one had died. Gary Noel Vincent, 61 and homeless, died in Septemter 2001 of head injuries suffered when he fell off a retaining wall.

"He was a transient living on the streets, and we didn't even know it," Vincent said. "We wanted to bring his remains back, but we were too late."

Jason Brown, 38, of Washington, used the coroner's database to learn the fate of his estranged father, with whom he'd lost touch after his parents divorced. He heard through a family friend that William Edward Hart had died, but didn't know until contacting the coroner that it was a heart attack that claimed his life in January 2005.

"For me it was a confirmation about what had happened to him," Brown said. "It was a relief to put the pieces together."